I'd love to know how a US law about thermal imaging has anything to
do whatsoever with Canada.
The Canadian dude was making the point that the DirecTV signals are being beamed into his house, and thus under current Canadian law, he's free to do whatever he wants with the signals, including decode and watch 'em.
I was trying to point out that there's a price to be paid for this philosophy: you're also "broadcasting" your thermal image even when you're behind the closed walls of your house. Does he also agree that police, neighbors, passers-by should be able to spy on him using the latest and greatest thermal imaging technology, since his image is being sent into their airspace? (Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't, but I wanted to make sure that he had considered this ramification). I should probably make some joke about rubbing brain cells together here.
But rub my own brain as I might, I still think that "Digital convergence" is a fairly meaningless buzz-phrase, and is especially meaningless in the context of stealing (excuse me, liberating) DirecTV.
What a hoser, I thought you Canadians were like laid back, eh? In any case, where I said "stealing" feel free to substitute "liberating" or whatever word makes you happy, and understand that my point was that it still has nothing to do with 'digital convergence'.
Also, how do you feel about the "non-regulated signals" known as thermal energy?
This seems one more step toward the
fabled digital convergence, too.
What the heck does this mean? I'm serious, what does stealing DirecTV have to do with "digital convergence", which is pretty much a nonsense phrase to begin with?
Of course, most if not all of
the free webmail services do add a line of spam to
the top or bottom of all messages sent
My favorite example of this is hotmail, who continues to add a notice about "Click here for MS Internet Explorer" to their email. Is there anybody on the planet who will receive that mail and say, "Internet Explorer...never heard of it. Better click there, sounds interesting."
In this litigious society, have you spent much time thinking about possible legal issues around GnuCash? A lot of people get weird when money's the issue, and I can imagine someone trying to sue because:
- A bug in GnuCash caused an incorrect balance and thus overdrafts on the account.
- A bug caused private information (such as a bank balance) to be exposed to people it shouldn't be.
- A bug in online banking caused money to be lost, mistransfered, etc.
Obviously, bugs are possible in all software, but it seems like the intended audience for GnuCash is slightly less technical and perhaps thus less tolerant of bugs.
These same problems are faced by the commercial venders too, but they have armies of lawyers to help them out. I don't know how an open-source project would handle a lawsuit against it, and I'm wondering what you guys have thought about on this issue.
This isn't going to be the standard "I submitted the Doh is in the OED story two days ago and it got rejected" whine. I mean, I did submit it two days ago, but when I did it, I also included this story about the new Simpsons DVD box sets. So this whine also educates and informs.
Mensa really isn't all that exclusive; if you took the PSAT, SAT, GRE, or ACT, you can see if you qualify.
The page I linked is a bit out of date, but the main Mensa sites don't appear to publish test score requirements anymore. I suspect they want you to contact them first, so they can tell you how smart you are. And remember to pay your dues, smarty.
It seems that the code in question was released under the GPL, and to me, it seems clear that the GPL has been violated in both the letter and the spirit of the license.
I am tempted to argue that the more appropriate license would have been the LGPL. Yeah, yeah, RMS no longer likes the LGPL, but if I were creating a library, I still would LGPL it. However, I wasn't in charge this time:) and the choice of using GPL for a library has merits too.
Of course, it seems that Vidomi is confused: even though they might want the software to be LGPL'd, it isn't, and they are probably in violation because of the stricter GPL.
You've actually hit upon a lot of the ideas in the book; you should probably try reading it, if it sounds at all interesting, you would probably enjoy it.
To clarify what happens in the book: The terrorists blow up the central portion of the space elevator, pretty much directly at the midpoint. The top half flies harmlessly into space. The bottom half, now no longer balanced by the top half, flies into the ground.
And since it's made of these insanely strong carbon tubes, it doesn't crumble or break. It's a giant tube, thousands of kilometers long, falling into the earth. (If this still doesn't sound bad, here's the right thought experiment. Imagine cutting down a tree (and arguably a tree isn't such a bad model for carbon tubules). If you've ever cut down a big tree, you know the amount of force with which it hits the earth. Now imagine that same tree, except now it extends 20Km into the sky.
For the people who are still nay-sayers: Try computing the potential energy stored within a 5kg mass 10,000 km above the earth. Now convert that to kinetic energy and figure out the ground velocity. (Given, energy will be burnt up or diminished in the atmosphere, but anything that hits will have lotsnlots of joules.) Larry Niven talks about dropping 'crowbars' (with minimal guidance/targeting) from orbit as a weapon in the book Footfall. It's actually amazing how much power such a weapon could hold. (A projective travelling at 3000 m/s has a much kinetic energy equal to its weight in high explosives.)
In the Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, he describes a space elevator on Mars which is destroyed by terrorists. The effects of the billions of tons of carbon tubules smashing into Mars as the space elevator falls (wrapping itself around Mars in the process) is on a par with the destruction caused by asteroid/comet impact.
The books are quite good, with a lot of cool ideas, and are probably one of the most realistic treatments of how we could terraform Mars. But you'll have to work your way through some lengthy discussions about the geology of the red planet.
Once I got my DSL, those annoying popups totally sucked--the faster connection also sped the rate at which popups could open. This sucked for about a week, until someone pointed out that Alt-F4 closes them faster than they can pop up. I'm sure I'm not the only one who had trouble figuring that one out alone, so I thought I'd pass that tidbit along.
that's what the english word means. if it's an english dictionary you're not
looking at the german word, and hence your post is irrelavent. on the other
hand, that's not to say michael didn't intend to use the english word.
Well, let's see: Michael was speaking in English, and the English word makes more sense in this context than the speculated German meanings. I think it's relatively likely that Michael intended to use the English word.
I didn't mean to disparrage Wolf 3d; I spent hundreds of hours playing it, so clearly I think it rocked. (I could probably make a case for suing Carmack for RSI based on this game alone:) It invented the first-person shooter as a genre, and it's still fun as hell.
But the technology is out of date. The graphics are dated, the sound is dated, and I don't even remember if there's a deathmatch mode. The point is: retail games made in 2001 higher technological standard to live up to, which would be difficult for an individual programmer to achieve on his own. But making a game with slightly dated technology is quite possible; people have done it. (And by concentrating on gameplay and not just technology, you might make a game that's actually more fun than those modern retail games.)
I recommend a CS degree; you'll learn higher-level concepts that will be hard to pick up otherwise. However, you might not apply those skills day-to-day.
For that, the only way to go is to start programming games. You might not be able to make a world-class first person shooter during your spare time, but you might be able to make a Wolfenstein 3D. Consider it a necessary part of your education; you will never take a class that teaches you all of the skills, so you have to force yourself to make time. The experience you gather from doing something like this cannot be gained any other way.
That's right: millions, if not billions, are being lost because I'm able to play a CD in my car radio when I may have unauthorized, unpaying, passengers in there with me. The auto industry (as well as the car stereo industry) are complicit in this massive conspiracy of intellectual property theft.
And don't get me started on "Boom Boxes" that can quickly turn a whole backyard of people into a group of criminal anti-capitalistic pirates.
Time to dig out RMS's "The Right To Read" essay again. The scariest part is that I probably reread this essay once a year, and each time, we've crept closer and closer to it being reality.
That's the first I've heard of it. Anybody have any links, or were they just lying?
Nova on recent DNA discoveries, west coast, NOW
on
A Map to Nowhere?
·
· Score: 2
On my PBS, and I assume many West Coast PBS stations, a NOVA describing recent DNA discoveries (pretty simplified thus far) is on TV, RIGHT NOW. And Nova actually has some credibility when it comes to science news, unlike the Spectator. Hopefully this helps someone.
Go buy yourself a bunch of X-10 parts and download MisterHouse. Assuming you've already got the Linux box and the net connection, the rest is simple.
I did this last summer, so that I could turn
on my air conditioning shortly before leaving work. When I got home, it would be pleasantly cool. Since my work hours varied widely, this worked better than the timer solution.
The obvious next step, which should be easy once I get the time: use my Motorola T900 two-way pager to send myself email which turns my air conditioner on and off. Granted, this probably isn't necessary, but it sure seems neat.
Xemacs has "strokes mode" which is pretty much gestures for emacs. If you've used one of the CAD tools that supports strokes (Mentor Graphics for me) you really start to appreciate what a great improvement to the UI they are.
I'd like to see the entire GUI component of an OS support this.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd love to know how a US law about thermal imaging has anything to do whatsoever with Canada.
The Canadian dude was making the point that the DirecTV signals are being beamed into his house, and thus under current Canadian law, he's free to do whatever he wants with the signals, including decode and watch 'em.
I was trying to point out that there's a price to be paid for this philosophy: you're also "broadcasting" your thermal image even when you're behind the closed walls of your house. Does he also agree that police, neighbors, passers-by should be able to spy on him using the latest and greatest thermal imaging technology, since his image is being sent into their airspace? (Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't, but I wanted to make sure that he had considered this ramification). I should probably make some joke about rubbing brain cells together here.
But rub my own brain as I might, I still think that "Digital convergence" is a fairly meaningless buzz-phrase, and is especially meaningless in the context of stealing (excuse me, liberating) DirecTV.
It's not 'stealing,' because us Canadians
What a hoser, I thought you Canadians were like laid back, eh? In any case, where I said "stealing" feel free to substitute "liberating" or whatever word makes you happy, and understand that my point was that it still has nothing to do with 'digital convergence'.
Also, how do you feel about the "non-regulated signals" known as thermal energy?
This seems one more step toward the fabled digital convergence, too.
What the heck does this mean? I'm serious, what does stealing DirecTV have to do with "digital convergence", which is pretty much a nonsense phrase to begin with?
Of course, most if not all of the free webmail services do add a line of spam to the top or bottom of all messages sent
My favorite example of this is hotmail, who continues to add a notice about "Click here for MS Internet Explorer" to their email. Is there anybody on the planet who will receive that mail and say, "Internet Explorer...never heard of it. Better click there, sounds interesting."
In this litigious society, have you spent much time thinking about possible legal issues around GnuCash? A lot of people get weird when money's the issue, and I can imagine someone trying to sue because:
- A bug in GnuCash caused an incorrect balance and thus overdrafts on the account.
- A bug caused private information (such as a bank balance) to be exposed to people it shouldn't be.
- A bug in online banking caused money to be lost, mistransfered, etc.
Obviously, bugs are possible in all software, but it seems like the intended audience for GnuCash is slightly less technical and perhaps thus less tolerant of bugs.
These same problems are faced by the commercial venders too, but they have armies of lawyers to help them out. I don't know how an open-source project would handle a lawsuit against it, and I'm wondering what you guys have thought about on this issue.
This isn't going to be the standard "I submitted the Doh is in the OED story two days ago and it got rejected" whine. I mean, I did submit it two days ago, but when I did it, I also included this story about the new Simpsons DVD box sets. So this whine also educates and informs.
Mensa really isn't all that exclusive; if you took the PSAT, SAT, GRE, or ACT, you can see if you qualify.
The page I linked is a bit out of date, but the main Mensa sites don't appear to publish test score requirements anymore. I suspect they want you to contact them first, so they can tell you how smart you are. And remember to pay your dues, smarty.
As you can tell from this article in The New York Daily News.
It seems that the code in question was released under the GPL, and to me, it seems clear that the GPL has been violated in both the letter and the spirit of the license.
I am tempted to argue that the more appropriate license would have been the LGPL. Yeah, yeah, RMS no longer likes the LGPL, but if I were creating a library, I still would LGPL it. However, I wasn't in charge this time :) and the choice of using GPL for a library has merits too.
Of course, it seems that Vidomi is confused: even though they might want the software to be LGPL'd, it isn't, and they are probably in violation because of the stricter GPL.
You've actually hit upon a lot of the ideas in the book; you should probably try reading it, if it sounds at all interesting, you would probably enjoy it.
To clarify what happens in the book: The terrorists blow up the central portion of the space elevator, pretty much directly at the midpoint. The top half flies harmlessly into space. The bottom half, now no longer balanced by the top half, flies into the ground.
And since it's made of these insanely strong carbon tubes, it doesn't crumble or break. It's a giant tube, thousands of kilometers long, falling into the earth. (If this still doesn't sound bad, here's the right thought experiment. Imagine cutting down a tree (and arguably a tree isn't such a bad model for carbon tubules). If you've ever cut down a big tree, you know the amount of force with which it hits the earth. Now imagine that same tree, except now it extends 20Km into the sky.
For the people who are still nay-sayers: Try computing the potential energy stored within a 5kg mass 10,000 km above the earth. Now convert that to kinetic energy and figure out the ground velocity. (Given, energy will be burnt up or diminished in the atmosphere, but anything that hits will have lotsnlots of joules.) Larry Niven talks about dropping 'crowbars' (with minimal guidance/targeting) from orbit as a weapon in the book Footfall. It's actually amazing how much power such a weapon could hold. (A projective travelling at 3000 m/s has a much kinetic energy equal to its weight in high explosives.)
In the Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson, he describes a space elevator on Mars which is destroyed by terrorists. The effects of the billions of tons of carbon tubules smashing into Mars as the space elevator falls (wrapping itself around Mars in the process) is on a par with the destruction caused by asteroid/comet impact.
The books are quite good, with a lot of cool ideas, and are probably one of the most realistic treatments of how we could terraform Mars. But you'll have to work your way through some lengthy discussions about the geology of the red planet.
Once I got my DSL, those annoying popups totally sucked--the faster connection also sped the rate at which popups could open. This sucked for about a week, until someone pointed out that Alt-F4 closes them faster than they can pop up. I'm sure I'm not the only one who had trouble figuring that one out alone, so I thought I'd pass that tidbit along.
that's what the english word means. if it's an english dictionary you're not looking at the german word, and hence your post is irrelavent. on the other hand, that's not to say michael didn't intend to use the english word.
Well, let's see: Michael was speaking in English, and the English word makes more sense in this context than the speculated German meanings. I think it's relatively likely that Michael intended to use the English word.
No need to go to a German translation; it's a word that appears in most good English dictionaries.
I didn't mean to disparrage Wolf 3d; I spent hundreds of hours playing it, so clearly I think it rocked. (I could probably make a case for suing Carmack for RSI based on this game alone :) It invented the first-person shooter as a genre, and it's still fun as hell.
But the technology is out of date. The graphics are dated, the sound is dated, and I don't even remember if there's a deathmatch mode. The point is: retail games made in 2001 higher technological standard to live up to, which would be difficult for an individual programmer to achieve on his own. But making a game with slightly dated technology is quite possible; people have done it. (And by concentrating on gameplay and not just technology, you might make a game that's actually more fun than those modern retail games.)
I recommend a CS degree; you'll learn higher-level concepts that will be hard to pick up otherwise. However, you might not apply those skills day-to-day.
For that, the only way to go is to start programming games. You might not be able to make a world-class first person shooter during your spare time, but you might be able to make a Wolfenstein 3D. Consider it a necessary part of your education; you will never take a class that teaches you all of the skills, so you have to force yourself to make time. The experience you gather from doing something like this cannot be gained any other way.
That's right: millions, if not billions, are being lost because I'm able to play a CD in my car radio when I may have unauthorized, unpaying, passengers in there with me. The auto industry (as well as the car stereo industry) are complicit in this massive conspiracy of intellectual property theft.
And don't get me started on "Boom Boxes" that can quickly turn a whole backyard of people into a group of criminal anti-capitalistic pirates.
Time to dig out RMS's "The Right To Read" essay again. The scariest part is that I probably reread this essay once a year, and each time, we've crept closer and closer to it being reality.
That's the first I've heard of it. Anybody have any links, or were they just lying?
On my PBS, and I assume many West Coast PBS stations, a NOVA describing recent DNA discoveries (pretty simplified thus far) is on TV, RIGHT NOW. And Nova actually has some credibility when it comes to science news, unlike the Spectator. Hopefully this helps someone.
The article didn't say.
Sure it did, in the sidebar: "Jan. 3, 1929: Born in San Francisco."
I think that a good poll question would be "Which episode of the Ultima series was the best?"
(BTW, the answer is obviously "Ultima IV")
Go buy yourself a bunch of X-10 parts and download MisterHouse. Assuming you've already got the Linux box and the net connection, the rest is simple.
I did this last summer, so that I could turn on my air conditioning shortly before leaving work. When I got home, it would be pleasantly cool. Since my work hours varied widely, this worked better than the timer solution.
The obvious next step, which should be easy once I get the time: use my Motorola T900 two-way pager to send myself email which turns my air conditioner on and off. Granted, this probably isn't necessary, but it sure seems neat.
Welcome to the future.
Xemacs has "strokes mode" which is pretty much gestures for emacs. If you've used one of the CAD tools that supports strokes (Mentor Graphics for me) you really start to appreciate what a great improvement to the UI they are.
I'd like to see the entire GUI component of an OS support this.